Market manipulation

Chat logs introduced as evidence by prosecutors at the Chicago spoofing trial of two former precious-metals traders for Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit show one of them, Edward Bases, bragging about how easy it was to manipulate prices.

In the short term, the paper gold market certainly harms the only genuine gold market which is physical. But artificial markets or instruments have never survived in history. Just look at the fact that every fiat currency in history which has failed. And so will paper gold. It is only a matter of...

Like many fixed-income securities, the gold prices are completely detached from supply and demand. The mechanism for determining prices is distorted by ‘tools’ that enable the monetary authorities to alter the perception of their inflationary monetary policies.

The economic actors’ confidence regarding the central banks’ ability to correct this inflation, which they deem to be transitory, is certainly not open to question today. However, without rapid and specific action by these central banks (particularly on interest rates), this patience, which is al...

What was it that caused the sheer scale of this fall? Did the Fed raise interest rates brusquely and sharply, leading to a reaction like this on gold? The conclusions of the Fed’s meeting last week are far from dramatic, though. Nonetheless, they had the effect of an electric shock.

Investing successfully is primarily about managing risk rather than maximising profits. As we reach the end of the biggest bull market in history, investors feel so secure that risk has become an irrelevance.

The destruction of money is now accelerating in parallel with the deficit and debt expansion. This is the typical course of events for the end game.

The “match” between the two camps (the inflationists versus those who are convinced of the transitory impact of the rise in prices) is leading, as one would logically expect, to this very volatile phase on the gold and silver metals markets.

Holding physical gold is like putting your money on black on a roulette table with only black numbers. You know that you will win every time as history proves with 100% certainty that governments will continue to destroy the currency and thus the economy.

With the Basel III accord, the most important change for precious metals is that banks would be required to hold reserves against their assets. Under the coming regulations, banks would count unallocated precious metals at 85 percent of their value on the bank’s books in making the determination...